


Once more, for my sake

by Aegiswarrior



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, implied Sumia/Cordelia, short collection of scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22863148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegiswarrior/pseuds/Aegiswarrior
Summary: Three times Severa reaches out to the people she cares about, and one time someone reaches out to her.
Relationships: Cynthia & Serena | Severa, Lucina/Serena | Severa, Noire & Serena | Severa
Comments: 1
Kudos: 81





	Once more, for my sake

  1. Cynthia



Ever since she was a child Cynthia has been physically affectionate, ignoring Severa’s grumbling to wrap her up into a hug tight enough to break bones at the slightest provocation. Sometimes, if she was feeling particularly annoying, she’d pick Severa up off the ground and swing her around, laughing even as Severa screamed at her.

When she was younger, Severa hated it. Hated how Cynthia never seemed to dwell on the same pitfalls that always trapped Severa, that she could love so intensely and without complication, that she could admit to loving her family without feeling the same guilt that always rose up Severa’s throat to choke her when she tried to do the same.

She even has Cordelia’s _perfect_ hair. Sometimes, Severa thinks, life really isn’t fair.

It became hard to even look at her after Cordelia… After Cordelia stopped coming home.

But Cynthia’s still her little sister, and even if she’s getting taller now, even if she has started winning sparring matches when they train together. So, when Sumia’s Pegasus comes home without a rider, Severa takes Cynthia into her arms, presses her face against her crimson hair, and tries not to let her shoulders shake enough for Cynthia to notice.

“If they could stop mum…” Cynthia says, her voice too soft. Severa is far too used to her shouting, to the excitement that usually lifts her voice into deafening ranges. For a second, she wonders if the same girl is speaking.

Cynthia’s fingers are digging into Severa’s back, but she doesn’t reprimand her, or slap her hands away. There’s a strange comfort in being held this tightly, a comfort Severa knows she’d never be brave enough to ask for.

“Don’t.” Severa hisses. She wishes she were as graceful as Cordelia, as effortlessly charming as Sumia. But she is just Severa, the defective shadow of both, brash and cruel even when she is trying to be kind. “They won’t stop us. They won’t.”

  1. Noire



Severa remembers the day Grima attacked Ylisstol like it had happened moments ago. Remembers being shaken awake by a soldier she didn’t even know, having a sword pressed into her hands before her mind had fully caught up with what was happening. She remembers how dark the sky was, clouds rendering it impenetrable, and how it had still seemed to grow darker still when she saw the first of the Risen standing on the streets, head cocked at an unnatural angle.

The first one was easy to cut down. But it was only the start, and the ever-swelling flood of them pushed Severa back, towards the castle. And the soldiers fighting beside her, most barely old enough to have signed up at all, flounder at what is to many of them their first taste of combat.

And Severa cannot protect them all. Not when she can barely protect herself.

She makes it to the castle, where Owain sneaks her through the door just before they start to barricade it. Inside she has the chance to breathe, if only for a second.

Part of Severa just wants to collapse here, to drop her sword and not pick it back up again. But a stronger part of her is unspeakably furious, that the same creatures who stole both her mothers from her have not yet been satiated.

She jams her sword back in its sheath, and tries to stomp off into a private corner, only to have a soft touch brush her elbow.

“Are you alright?” Noire asks her, softly. She has one hand clutched around her amulet, the last memory she has of her mother. Severa only distantly remembers Tharja, and what she does remember is more having to hide Noire away when her mother went hunting for her to use in her experiments. She doesn’t get why Noire would want any kind of reminder of a woman like that, but the necklace seems to calm her, so whatever. It’s hardly Severa’s decision to make.

“Just mad.” Severa tells her. Noire nods, but she doesn’t leave.

“You’re not scared?” Noire asks, after a second. Severa sends a curious glance over her. There’s ash and dust in her hair, a shallow cut on one side of her face. The arrows in her quiver are askew, haphazardly organised as if she had hurriedly shoved them in. And the hand wrapped tight around her amulet is bone white.

“I’m not.” Severa says. It’s almost the truth. If she had enough time to be scared, she clearly isn’t angry enough.

But she’s not completely terrible at reading people, so she reaches out and takes up Noire’s spare hand. She had only meant to pick it up for a second, squeeze it and let her go, but even at that first touch Noire has started to relax, and she holds onto Severa’s hand so tight that she no longer knows if it’s possible to escape at all.

  1. Lucina



Their princess is far too reckless. The one member of their merry little band that isn’t disposable, and she throws herself into each fight they encounter with wild abandon, never letting anyone else fight for her. She’s skilled, sure, but she risks the odds every time. Severa knows all too well how easy it is for even the most skilled of soldiers to make a simple mistake that stops them from ever coming home. They all should. Lucina is the oldest of all of them, she should know that most of all.

But she still fights like that doesn’t matter, lets herself kill and bleed like the rest of them. If she doesn’t start being more careful, Severa knows that one day one of the shallow cuts Lucina receives on the battlefield will be deeper, will cut through skin and muscle and bone and still her heart forever. That everything they’ve fought for and risked all this time will be worth nothing, because their reckless princess let herself be killed in the middle of nowhere, achieving nothing and saving no one.

That thought sticks in Severa’s mind, has her searching for Lucina every time there’s even the slightest hint of danger, has her charging ahead of her and into combat before anyone, bandits or risen or anything worse, can even think to hurt her.

Sure, it earnt her a few more scratches than it would otherwise, but their princess, their last chance at ending this stupid war, is still alive, so it’s worth it.

But she’s begun to regret that choice lately. Lucina has been acting strange around her. She insists on pairing the two of them together on recon missions, and in the battles that they inevitably find themselves in, she refuses to stay one step behind Severa, where it’s safe, but slips next to her in every fight.

It’s grating. Severa’s barely younger than her, and she’s not timid like Noire, or oblivious like her sister. She can take care of herself without Lucina watching over her shoulder. The thought that Lucina trusts her so little settles under Severa’s skin like hot coals, impossible to ignore but just as impossible to dig out.

“You’re going to be the death of me.” Severa tells Lucina, after a battle where Lucina had stepped in front of a blade swung at Severa. She’s lucky the sword had sunk into her arm, and hadn’t slipped somewhere more dangerous. Especially now, with them miles from camp with no healer to stitch them back together.

“That defeats the point of me protecting you, doesn’t it?” Lucina says. One of her hands is wrapped around her still bleeding arm, but she still tries to smile.

Severa nearly bites back, tempted to shake Lucina until she finally gets it through her thick skull that she should worry about herself before anyone else. That she’s the one that matters, the one person they can’t stand to lose. That even Severa dying isn’t worth risking losing a limb over, that she should have stood back and let Severa take the hit. But she can’t stay mad at Lucina, stubborn and dangerously noble as she is.

She makes Lucina sit, takes her arm and slowly unwraps her tight grip from the wound. It’s deep, but it’s clean, and the bone isn’t broken. Severa takes out one of their precious few vulneraries, and carefully smears it on Lucina’s wound. It closes, until there’s not even a scar to mark where it once was, but even then Severa doesn’t let her go.

“I don’t want you getting hurt for me.” Severa says. It comes out too sharp. She can see Lucina react to it, twisting her head to try and look Severa in the eyes, but Severa doesn’t meet her. She keeps looking at Lucina’s newly healed arm, the tear in her clothes, the blood on Severa’s hands.

“I don’t want to see you hurt either.” Lucina says softly.

“You matter more than I do.” Severa says. “If I’m gone it’s just sad. If you’re gone the world ends.”

She looks up to find Lucina’s expression twisting into something too close to pity for Severa’s comfort. The thought of Lucina continuing to argue, or worse, trying to talk about _Severa_ instead makes her lean in closer, press her hand against Lucina’s mouth before she can say anything.

“For my sake,” she says, “be a little more selfish. Promise me you won’t throw your life away.”

She pulls her hand away.

“I won’t throw it away.” Lucina tells her. “But I won’t abandon you either.”

  1. Severa



It’s her. Lucina again, after all these years. Severa really must be cursed, to spend years searching for her only to stumble into her like this.

“Are you alright?” Lucina asks her.

“I’m fine.” Severa says. It’s not convincing. She can see it in the way Lucina looks at her, the way Lucina steps in closer, as if she wants to protect her again, just like she used to. Severa would rather have kept this entire embarrassing situation to herself, and spend the next few days suppressing the memory of it entirely. But knowing Lucina, she might just tear through camp searching for whoever upset her.

“I was just talking to mother.” She makes herself admit. “It was a mess. My fault. It always is.”

Lucina steps in closer still, and before Severa can think to stop her she wraps her arms around Severa and pulls her into her chest. She’s warm. Severa notices that, once her brain manages to catch up. She’s warm, and she smells nicer than someone who has been on a march for days has any right to, and she’s so familiar and comforting that Severa cannot help but melt into her touch. How long has it been since anyone has touched Severa without trying to kill her? Long enough that she is desperate for it now, that she can let herself forget that this is her princess, a girl she hasn’t even seen in years, and let herself cling to Lucina tighter than she has any right to.

She wishes she knew what to say. That she knew how to erase this whole embarrassing situation from Lucina’s mind, or that she knew how to hold onto her longer without it getting awkward.

“Um.” She says instead. “It’s been a while. Hasn’t it.”

“It has.” Lucina tells her. She pulls back, and Severa hates herself for speaking. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Yeah. It is.” Severa wants to kick herself. Why have all her words run from her now, just as she needs them most? “I’m, um. Glad you’re safe.”

“Somehow I survived without you there to protect me.”

“Very funny.” Severa snaps back. She forces that immediate flush of irritation back down, makes herself breathe, makes herself think. It’s harder than it should be, when Lucina has that soft smile on her face, when she’s standing close enough to brush an errant strand of Severa’s hair back. “Don’t worry. I’ll be keeping you out of trouble from now on.”

“I’m counting on it.” Lucina says.


End file.
